“Nazim Hikmet was not at all what we call an 'intellectual.' He did not squander his senses on endless and vague spiritual transformations. He lived them. He felt vast and thought in general ideas, based on fundamental, logical schemata.

He did not discover or reveal, but verified already accepted ideas, and reflected naturally on his feelings, and not through his feelings. And the coincidence of feeling and idea (and their balance within his work) is natural in Hikmet's case, not forced.

Yes, he is not an 'intellectual.' He was not consumed by the feeling of awkwardness in front of people, events, or time ─ he did not feel either 'foreign' or 'special' or 'alone.' He did not live within the dark 'thousand-eyed suspicion' that is exhausted in an unending search, groping through incredible areas of ever-pending 'invisible threats' and creating 'impenetrable shelters' of astonishing technical ingenuity.

For him, threats had been defined within a specific historical, social space. And his struggle, the struggle of his art, had a definite, visible goal. He did not feel the need for internal self-protection. He protected himself by protecting others, and fought with the most bare-faced candor.” Excerpt from the introduction by Giannis Ritsos